For the 23 years prior to its banning on June 21, 1994, Tempo magazine was Indonesia’s most important news weekly, and its chief editor, Goenawan Mohamad, one of Indonesia’s leading poets and intellectuals. Yet despite its influence, the history of Tempo magazine is not widely known. All aspects of Tempo’s history, including its roots in the literary and cultural milieu of the 1960s, its economic organization and management, its internal culture and system of deciding what’s news, and its strategies for survival within a repressive press system, provide a window into the political and cultural history of Indonesia’s New Order.

Tempo occupied an ambiguous position in Indonesia’s New Order,

and Wars Within: The Story of Tempo, an Independent Magazine in Soeharto’s Indonesia explores these contradictions and paradoxes. Clearly a product of the New Order, Tempo nevertheless presented independent points of view, often at considerable risk. Soeharto’s government was never monolithic, and the story of how Tempo managed to survive 23 years of autocratic rule sheds light on the culture and politics of modern Indonesia. It also sheds light on broader questions concerning the role of the press in developing countries – and on the kinds of negotiation that must go on for an essentially democratic institution to exist in an authoritarian space.

Written in a narrative style, Wars Within utilizes a variety of

methods and sources, including participant observation, a content

analysis of Tempo’s National section, close reading of Tempo’s coverage of key episodes including the 1984 incident at Tanjung Priok, previously unpublished archival materials, and over one hundred interviews with the magazine’s founders, writers, and contributors. Wars Within is an ideal supplemental text in courses on Southeast Asian history, politics, and culture, as well as in courses on international communication and media studies.

Janet Steele is an Associate Professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. in American Cultural History from the Johns Hopkins University in 1985. Her book The Sun Shines for All: Journalism and Ideology in the Life of Charles A. Dana, was published in 1993 by Syracuse University Press. She has published articles on media history and criticism in journals such as Indonesia, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Political Communication, Columbia Journalism Review, and The American Journalism Review. Her most recent work is on the press in modern Indonesia, and she is a frequent visitor to Jakarta, where she lectures on topics ranging from the role of the press in a democratic society to more specialized courses on narrative journalism. In 2003 she was awarded a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant in communication and journalism at the Institute for the Study of the Free Flow of Information in Jakarta.